


There Are Many Here Among Us

by leiascully



Category: Battlestar Galactica (2003), Leverage
Genre: Crossovers & Fandom Fusions, Cylons, Multi, OT3
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-23
Updated: 2020-12-23
Packaged: 2021-03-10 23:02:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,623
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28255098
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/leiascully/pseuds/leiascully
Summary: It was some comfort, at the end of everything else they'd known, to have each other, even if everybody kind of thought Parker was a Cylon.
Relationships: Alec Hardison/Parker/Eliot Spencer
Comments: 14
Kudos: 31
Collections: 2020 Leverage Secret Santa Exchange





	There Are Many Here Among Us

**Author's Note:**

  * For [magnetgirl](https://archiveofourown.org/users/magnetgirl/gifts).



Parker hadn't enlisted in the Colonial Fleet because she gave a frak about patriotism or any of that stuff. No, she'd signed her life away for the chance to fly. Ever since her father had put her in her first little flivver, she'd loved flying. She still remembered the first time he'd let her fly a real transport - her screams of laughter had harmonized perfectly with his screams of terror. Growing up on Scorpia, there'd been plenty of opportunities to work in the shipyards. 

She didn't mind the uniforms. Uniforms kind of made life easier. She didn't mind the officers yelling at her or the long hours or living packed into the quarters with all the rest of the recruits. Parker got to be in a cockpit and that was all that mattered. When she climbed into her Viper, everything else fell away. With only a pane of plex between her and the stars, she was free. 

Nobody could fly like Parker. She'd never really needed the training. Sure, they'd taught her what all the buttons and levers were called, but Parker hadn't needed to know the names of them to know what to do. Flying was as easy as breathing. Strapped into the seat of her bird, she'd finally felt at home. She'd perfected maneuvers the Fleet had been training on for decades. She'd invented a few new ones. Parker flew like she'd been born in a cockpit and raised with a throttle in her hand.

Outside the Fleet - or more accurately, outside the cozy confinement of her bird - Parker had never really fit in. She'd always been a little bit too much for people, or not enough, or something. She still was, most of the time. It was just that everyone was stuck with her now. There was nowhere else to go. But in the air, in the black - she was everything. She was a star streaking across the galaxy. She was faster than faster-than-light. The universe made sense when she flew, even the catastrophes. Even her own perplexing mind.

\+ + + + 

Eliot had never really thought he'd get off Aerelon. His family's farm was his destiny, and keeping their old-as-frak machinery running. But then the Fleet had come calling. Turned out they had some old-as-frak machinery that was barely staying in the air, and they needed mechanics who knew how to treat it right. So he'd signed his papers, put on his jumpsuit, and gone to work. It wasn't his dream, but it was three square meals and no cows, and he saw a lot more people than he'd seen out on the farm. He liked it all well enough. He'd known plenty of people even rougher than military folk out on the farm. The worst part had been the first few weeks when everyone had called him Spencer and he'd looked around for his dad every time. But now they all called him Eliot. Even said Eliot on his jumpsuit. He was lucky he had a first name that sounded enough like a last name that it wasn't much of an adjustment. 

When the worlds had ended, Eliot hadn't felt much. One fleeting moment of relief, maybe, that no one was ever gonna haul him back to the farm, because the farm was pretty much definitely gone. There'd been grief too, of course, and there still was, but it was like a healed-over break in the bone. He felt it mostly when the wind changed, or when a storm was brewing. Metaphorically, now: there wasn't any weather in space, but he still sensed the way the pressure rose and fell. _Galactica_ 's crew was as tired as she was, every frakking one of them weary and worn out. But Eliot's aches had saved him before: he'd gone around securing all the Raptors to the deck once right before something had made _Galactica_ yaw on her axis and tumbled everything that wasn't tied down, and he'd replaced more than one conduit that had basically shredded in his hands as he pulled it out of the engine. 

"What do your bones say?" the deck chief asked him, and it was half a joke, but only half. Eliot trusted his bones. His instincts had gotten him out of enough scrapes that he would have been a fool not to.

He'd seen Parker, of course. She was a hotshot, but less cocky than he'd thought she'd be, mostly because she kinda seemed like she was in her own world most of the time, somewhere out beyond the Twelve Colonies. But he liked her. Parker always grinned at him when she saw him. She was the kind of pilot who didn't mind getting her hands dirty. She'd spent some time with him the last time he'd been tinkering with her bird, asking questions, tucked up right alongside him heedless of the grime that had gotten on her flight suit and her pretty face. Eliot was well enough used to pretty girls, but Parker, as strange as she was, was different. She had instincts like his, he thought. The two of them knew how to stay one step ahead of the real trouble, even if they still wound up greasy.

\+ + + +

Hardison's hands stayed pretty clean in CIC. It was funny, the way he'd ended up on _Galactica_. He'd trained on all the newest tech at university on Caprica. No one who'd known him at Qualai would have thought he'd be up to his elbows in the oldest computer systems in the fleet. But he'd grown up without a lot, and he'd put together networks from parts even older and creakier than this. _Galactica_ had been a natural fit. He'd been assured by the higher-ups that if he took this commission, there would be fancier accommodations in his future. Pegasus, maybe, or one of the ships still just a skeleton in the shipyards. Something incredible. All he had to do was keep a venerable old lady limping along to her retirement. 

He'd been so frakking close.

 _Galactica_ wasn't the life he would have chosen, but she was cozy in her own way. She creaked and sighed like an old house, sang Hardison to sleep in his bunk with mechanical lullabies. He had no doubt there would have been more comforts on _Pegasus_ or one of the newer Battlestars, but he hadn't been accustomed to comforts in his life Before anyway, at least not for most of his life. University had changed things, or it would have, but all of that was gone. He didn't like to think of the leveled city, its vaporized citizens. He didn't like to think of the people who might be left, scrounging in the ruins for some way to survive the apocalypse. 

CIC personnel didn't mingle much with the others during the day, but he'd helped Eliot from the deck crew with the computer-y parts of a couple of the older Vipers a few times, and everybody knew Parker. Parker, who was so odd that people joked she might be a Cylon. The way her mind worked didn't seem quite human, and her reflexes were something else entirely. Hardison had noticed them enough to keep an eye out in case he saw them at Joe's Bar, or in the mess hall. He wanted to get to know them a little better. Eliot was handsome and Parker was pretty, and Hardison missed handsome men and pretty women. Maybe there wasn't any kind of time for that kind of thing when they were running for their lives every day, but hell, it was the end of the worlds. He might as well keep some corner of his heart open, just in case. 

\+ + + +

It was after one of the dances that they'd gotten together. A little booze, a little adrenaline, a lot of pent-up energy waiting to be un-pent. It seemed like half the deck crew had been waiting to take a shot or two at Eliot, but Eliot had won his bouts, and only bled a little. Hardison had been admiring the swell of Eliot's muscles under the fresh bruises. Parker kept poking them. Eliot had thrown an arm around Parker to pin her hands, and then an arm around Hardison because why the hell not, and then they'd both stared at him until he'd kissed them, and that was that. They'd gone back to his bunk and enjoyed each other's charms until the other occupants of the quarters had started throwing their boots because there was too much noise.

It was some comfort, at the end of everything else they'd known, to have each other. It was warmth in the dark. Parker had something to come home to, an anchor beyond the black. Eliot and Hardison had a reason not to linger on the deck or in CIC, up to their elbows in wires and sprockets. They spent their free time together, sharing a companionable drink at the bar or tangled together in somebody's bunk or challenging each other in what passed for _Galactica_ 's gym when their shifts off lined up. Turned out it wasn't too late to fall in love, even if there weren't restaurants or flowers or any of that kind of thing left. They made their own romance, distilled it from their hope and their fear and the salt of their sweat. Maybe it wouldn't have been enough in their lives before, but it was more than enough now. Their love felt like a whole new world. They were writing their own history, marking off the days together on the walls of their bunks.

Everything was as good as it could get until Eliot started hearing music. 

\+ + + +

It started with humming. He didn't even realize he was doing it until Hardison asked him about it. They were brushing their teeth at the sink while Parker showered. The three of them had learned the hard way it worked out better if they didn't shower together, but tooth brushing was a less distractible activity. Usually. 

"Huh?" Eliot said. "I'm not humming."

"Yeah, you definitely are," Hardison said. He hummed a snatch of melody back at Eliot. It made Eliot's brain itch.

"Weird," Eliot said.

"What?" Parker asked, coming out of the shower still toweling herself off. 

"Eliot's humming," Hardison told her.

"Must have a song stuck in my head," Eliot said. But he couldn't get it unstuck. He was still humming days later.

"Eliot," Parker mumbled into the pillow, nudging him with her foot. "Eliot. You're doing it again."

Eliot pressed his face into a fold of his blanket. It muffled the sound a little. But he hummed his way to his shift, and he hummed his way through repairing a Raptor, and by the time he met Hardison in the mess hall, he was whistling. 

"It really has a grip on you, huh?" Hardison said. 

"Guess so," Eliot said. 

"Maybe I can distract you after dinner," Hardison said, and he did, for a while, but Eliot dreamed about the song. 

"Sounds kind of familiar," Parker said. She hummed a few bars of it. 

"Yeah?" Eliot said eagerly. "You know it?"

Parker shook her head, slowly and then faster. "Maybe not. Just thought I'd heard it before somewhere for a second." 

The song haunted him. Day and night didn't look much different in _Galactica_ 's corridors, but he felt the rhythm of them, and twined through it all was the melody he couldn't escape. It got louder and louder in his head until he was mumbling lyrics he didn't know, mouthing the shape of the words as he stumbled through the corridors, following the song. The song was the beat of his heart and the stomp of his booted feet, louder and faster until he was running, and then - it all crashed down, a cascade of memories. He remembered the song. Had he ever really forgotten it? And he remembered the rest, years and years of memories. Before. Before before. 

"Frakking hell," he said. 

\+ + + + 

"You think Eliot is avoiding us?" Parker asked. She was still in her flight suit, sweaty from maneuvers, but she'd come straight to CIC to talk to Hardison. Flying made things clear to her, and Eliot's absences had blazed up in her mind's eye. Her mind connected the dots like a new constellation. She navigated by those stars to a conclusion.

"Is he?" Hardison said. He was up to his elbows in the guts of some computery stuff. She squatted down next to him, careful to avoid his tools.

"He is," Parker said.

"Why?" Hardison asked. "Also, could you hand me that little screwdriver? The really little one."

Parker did. "I don't know." 

Hardison withdrew from the computer. "We should probably find out."

"I agree," Parker said. 

"You got a plan?" Hardison asked. "Also, can I have that rubber glove and the wire cutters?"

"We could hug him until he tells us everything," Parker said, passing over the equipment.

"That's always your answer," Hardison grumbled.

"It always works," Parker pointed out. "I'm a lover, not a fighter."

"Ah, me too," Hardison said with a contented sigh.

"I'm a pilot, then a lover," Parker corrected herself. "Still. Not a fighter. That's the important thing."

"No one would ever accuse you of being a fighter," Hardison said in a serious voice. "And we can't really stuff him in your Viper and do barrel rolls until he gives in."

"Not again," Parker said. "It took forever to clean last time."

"I guess your hug-it-out plan is as good as any," he said.

Parker smirked. "Hey, it always works."

Hardison smiled at her. "Yeah, it always does. But let's give him a couple days, huh? Eliot's not the subtlest person I've ever met. He'll probably tell us everything if we just wait it out a little longer."

"Fine," Parker said. "I'll give him two more days. But after that - hugging."

"That's fair," Hardison said. "Pass me the itty bitty screws?"

\+ + + +

He told them. It had taken him the better part of a week, but he couldn't not tell them. He couldn't avoid them. _Galactica_ was a big ship, but she was too small for Eliot to hide from Parker. She'd find him, wherever he went. She had an unerring instinct for it. Eliot gritted his teeth. Hardison and Parker were his only solace, and he was going to lose them, but he was too dangerous. He snuck them into an empty Raptor during the night shift, the three of them not too crowded in the cargo space. Good. He wanted them to have room if he snapped. He wanted them to be able to restrain him if they needed to. Maybe they could strap him into the seat or shove him into one of the storage compartments. 

"Is this...romantic?" Hardison asked.

"No," Eliot said. He paced back and forth in the small space.

"Oh, good," Parker said. "I didn't think it was, but sometimes I'm wrong." 

Hardison rubbed her leg. "You do your best."

"So why did you bring us here?" Parker asked. "If it's not for romance."

"I have to tell y'all something," Eliot said. Five steps from one side to the other, ducking to avoid cracking his head. Maybe it would be better if he cracked his head. Maybe it would be better if he flung himself out the airlock. Maybe they'd do it for him. 

"Is he going to tell us, or is he just going to keep pacing?" Parker asked Hardison.

"Shh, baby, let him do this in his own time," Hardison told her.

They watched him a while longer. Parker yawned. "How long do you think his time is going to take? Because I could hug at any moment."

"I'm a godsdamn Cylon, all right?" Eliot burst out. "The music - it was a trigger, or a code, or something. It...I don't know, it unlocked me? I remembered everything that happened before I got put under or whatever. I swear I didn't know. Like Boomer. I don't know how, but they made me forget myself." He pressed his hands to his face. "Now y'all know. I'm sorry. I wasn't trying to lead y'all astray. I'm so frakking confused." 

"It's gonna be okay," Hardison said. He got up and rubbed Eliot's back, big slow soothing circles. 

"The frak it is," Eliot said. He clutched his head. "I was built, not born. I'm a thing. I'm probably your godsdamn doom."

Parker peered at his face. "You don't look like doom. Not any more than usual, anyway. You always look pretty tough. But I like the way you were built. Or whatever." 

Hardison shrugged. "I don't believe for a second you're our doom or anybody else's. You're a good man. As for the rest, I've been accused of dating a computer before. At least this time it'll be accurate."

"Everybody thinks I'm a Cylon anyway," Parker pointed out. "So I guess you're in good company."

"I don't know what to do," Eliot said. "I don't want to murder y'all."

"Do you feel like murdering us?" Parker asked.

"No," Eliot said immediately. "Well...." He thought about it. "No." 

"See?" Parker said. "Not doom."

"I still love y'all," Eliot said. "I mean, I think I love y'all. But maybe it's just programming. Maybe I'm meant to bring y'all down somehow."

"I mean, Parker might have a special destiny, but I don't," Hardison said. "So I'm not worried about it."

"I'm pretty sure love always involves some kind of doom," Parker said cheerfully. 

"It seems to have worked out so far for Helo and Athena," Hardison pointed out. "I mean, she doesn't seem to be his doom. They're pretty happy together. Got a baby and everything."

"Some of my best friends are Cylons," Parker said. "Probably. I mean I can't be sure but odds are pretty good at this point."

"I don't deserve y'all," Eliot said helplessly.

"Sure you do," Hardison said. "It's not like it was your idea to blow up the worlds. Seems like your life was upended by it all just as much as ours were."

"Does anybody deserve anything," Parker said. "None of us deserved the worlds ending, just for starters. So I don't really care too much about deserving. We have you. You have us. We belong together." 

"I won't say my response wouldn't have been different if this were the early days," Hardison said. "You know, right after. But we've all been through it together. You might be a Cylon, but that doesn't mean you're a bad person. Can't imagine saying that a few years ago, but times change." 

Parker winked at Eliot. "You know, I've never kissed a Cylon before. Not knowingly, anyway."

"Y'all are taking this way too well," Eliot said.

"I have like three good things left in my life and you and Hardison are two of them," Parker said calmly. "I'm not letting anything take them from me."

"I get a little spooked when you use that voice," Hardison told her. "It's way too matter of fact." Parker just smiled at him. Hardison turned back to Eliot. "Anyway, that's how we feel about it. Letting go isn't an option."

Eliot definitely wasn't crying. It was just really humid in the Raptor for some reason. Very specific parts of his face were sweating.

"Do you think that's why you're so good with machines?" Parker asked. "You know, you're on the wavelength?" She made a wavelength gesture with her hand.

"So by that logic, your great-granddaddy was a bird?" Eliot snapped, grateful for the opportunity to do anything but get all watery about how much he loved them.

Parker tapped her lip thoughtfully with one finger. "Probably a dolphin. It's more like swimming than flying, once you get out of the atmosphere."

"This is a good sign," Hardison said. "It's cute when you two argue."

Eliot sighed. "I can't believe y'all are taking this so well."

Hardison pulled him close and kissed his forehead. "Like I said, there was a long time when it wouldn't have gone this way. But living with Cylons is kind of what we do now. Sometimes it sucks, but you don't suck. Like Parker said, my plan is to hold on to the people I love. We're all programmed one way or another."

"Nice one," Parker said.

"Yeah, I took a sociology class or two," Hardison told her. "For whatever reason, they wouldn't just let me live in the computer lab at university. But it's fine. Now I can say stuff like that."

"I really love y'all," Eliot said helplessly. 

"We know," Parker said. She snuggled up to the two of them. "Is this romantic now?"

Eliot craned his head around. "Nah. Doesn't look comfortable."

"Can we go somewhere romantic?" Parker asked in a hopeful voice.

"Definitely," Hardison said. "And maybe our man here will discover he has some secret sexy powers."

"If I do, y'all'll be the first to know," Eliot said. 

"Now we know you can sing, too, so expect a lot more requests for that," Hardison told him.

"Yeah, who knew?" Eliot said. "Maybe perfect pitch is a secret upside to basically being a murder machine."

"You were a murder machine anyway," Parker said. "We saw you fight everyone." She pretended to punch the air. "I figured it was because you were from Aerelon."

Eliot laughed. It was the first time he'd laughed in a while. "Maybe it was," he said. 

"It's gonna be weird," Hardison said, pushing the button that opened the Raptor door, "but we're all gonna figure it out together. Can you live with that?"

"I can," Eliot said. 

"Can you live with us?" Parker asked.

"'Til my dyin' day," Eliot promised, and it kinda felt like his heart had grown three sizes.

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you enjoyed your Leverage/BSG crossover! It's not the fluffiest setting, but have some fluff anyway.


End file.
